The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Escape from Mount Gram
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Escape from Mount Gram Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Encounter Deck
"Escape from Mount Gram" is played with an encounter deck built with all the cards from the following encounter sets: Escape from Mount Gram and Angmar Orcs. (Angmar Orcs can be found in The Lost Realm deluxe expansion to The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game.)
Preparing A Captured Deck
When setting up Escape from Mount Gram, stage 1A instructs each player to prepare a separate captured deck. A captured deck represents the allies, heroes and equipment taken from each player's party that he or she must find and recover before they can be played.
To prepare a captured deck, remove all allies, Item attachments, Mount attachments, and Artifact attachments from the player deck, and shuffle them together. This pile is now referred to as your captured deck. A captured deck does not have its own discard pile; any cards that are discarded from a captured deck are placed in its owner's discard pile.
After preparing his or her captured deck, each player chooses only 1 hero to be his or her starting hero. Then, each player randomly sets aside 1 of his or her other heroes, facedown. Shuffle any remaining heroes into their owner's captured decks, then place each facedown set aside hero on top of its owner's captured deck.
Capture X
Capture is a new keyword in Escape from Mount Gram that represents locations or enemies that guard one or more captured cards. When an encounter card or quest card with the capture X keyword enters play, before resolving that card's "when revealed" effects, each player takes the top X cards of his or her captured deck and captures them by placing them facedown underneath that card. (If the players are at different stages of the quest, only the players at that stage perform this act.)
Captured Cards & Rescuing Cards
When cards are captured facedown underneath an encounter card, those cards are called "captured cards," and are considered to be out of play, under no player's control. This can occur from the capture X keyword, or from encounter card effects that instruct a player to capture 1 or more cards underneath a specified card. If a card is captured from play, all tokens on that card and attachments on that card are discarded.
When an encounter card or quest card with 1 or more captured cards underneath it leaves play, all of the captured cards underneath it are "rescued" by their owners. Rescued cards are placed in their owners' hands. If a hero card is rescued, immediately put it into play under its owner's control.
Creating a Staging Area
When each player is instructed to "create his own staging area," each player sets aside an area in front of himself to serve as his own private staging area. Only players that share a common staging area can interact with each other in any way. Players continue to resolve each phase of the game in turn order, starting with the First Player (which continues to move), but the resolution of each phase occurs as if only the player or players that share any given staging area are currently in the game.
- Players cannot affect players (or cards controlled by players) that do not share a common staging area. This means that you cannot lower a player's threat, play an attachment on one of his characters, etc., unless that player shares a staging area with you.
- During the encounter phase, players only reveal 1 card per player that shares their staging area. So in a 4 person game, where 4 players have been separated, each player would add 1 card to his staging area.
- Encounter card effects are limited to each staging area. For example, if an effect references "each player," then that effect only refers to each player that shares the staging area to which the encounter card would be added.
Joining Another Player
On stage 2B players are instructed to "join another player" if there are no captured cards underneath it. Joining another player happens at the beginning of the travel phase. The joining player(s) must add any encounter cards in his own staging area to the staging area of the player(s) he is joining with, keeping any enemies engaged with him and discarding any active location in the staging area being left. If multiple players have no captured cards underneath stage 2B during the same phase, they join quests starting with the First Player and proceeding clockwise around the table. If there is no player to join, then players must continue to stage 3.